Advertising or article?

C and I are trying to instill un-merchandised joys in our kids. We decided that we couldn't teach our kids that the best things in life aren't things you own while supplying them with lots and lots of things. God knows they have toys and games, but we try to err on the generic, open-ended, unbranded side. We don't have Transformers, Spiderman, Zhuzhu pets, and the like. A has some Disney shirts and that's about it for the branded things. (Toy brands we have: Lego, Playmobile, Melissa & Doug, bring it on.)

I was reading a magazine with A and he started asking me about the articles, specifically, a "Top Twenty-Five Toys This Christmas" kind of article. I explained to him that it looked like an article but it was actually an advertisement, which is a picture or story to get me to buy something from a company. [Note: I know lots of this is whoosh, over his head. But I didn't talk down to A when he was a baby and I'm not going to start now.] We tried "guess the ad" through the rest of the magazine and that's difficult for a grownup, let alone a four-year-old.

We drove to school that morning and A saw a picture on a billboard that had been in the magazine and pointed it out. So then we had a discussion about advertising again and all the ways companies advertise: magazines, radio, Internet, movies, billboards, clothing. I tried explaining to A that when he wears a shirt with someone else's picture on it, he's advertising for that company, and that I thought he was special enough that the only shirts we let him have with people or characters on them were the ones he really liked: Buzz, Pooh, Tigger.

He thought about this, and then said, "I want a shirt with all my friends' names on it so I can advertise them."

We do have the sweetest boy in the universe. Amazingly, adorably sweet.